Waves

Some nights it’s easier than others, to stay awake.


He flicks on the TV, watches the purple hues of Roku city float by, eventually finds some 80s movie, lets it play in the background, it’s nice to have something that breaks up the silence.


Settles on Smokey and the Bandit, though instead of watching the screen he reaches for the book he’s tried desperately to make it through-- a copy of the Divine Comedy his sisters had gotten him for his 24th.


They had always hated the way he treated the books he read--cracking the spine and dog-earing the pages.


He’d always said that the wear on a book showed how loved it had been--the best books have the covers falling off from years and years of rereading.


The spine of this one is intact, only one page dog-eared. 


His eyes lazily drag across the page he’s opened it to.


Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving,

Seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly,

That, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me;


Love has conducted us unto one death;

Caina waiteth him who quenched our life”

These words were borne along from them to us.


He has no energy for Dante and his journey through the damned today. 


his fingertips ache, subconsciously digging nails into his palms, tiny red crescents forming between his heart line, life line, head line. 


little moons making divots through the flesh, disrupting the wrinkles in his palm he’d never learned to read. Had never been spiritual, more along the lines of casual atheism dipped in catholic guilt that took the form of a rosary shoved in the back of his bedside drawer to collect dust. 


His youngest sister had been really into astrology for a summer, when she was 16 and he was 18. 


all he remembered was something about his Libra moon making him feel the need to connect with the world around him, and that Pisces was the fish sign. 


He absently wonders what she would think now, when he’s distanced himself so far from that world.


10 missed calls. 20% battery. 1 new message.


Deep down he knows he should open it, type out some bullshit excuse about how busy it’s been, make amends, even if they both know it’ll happen again.


But he feels just.. In a limbo. Adrift, desperately clinging to the surface of dark, choppy waves as each one threatens to crash over his head, send him down into murky depths. But it’s not waves at all but sweaty sheets of an unmade mattress on the floor of a studio apartment he can’t afford, but wow what a view of the hills from the fire escape at 3am. 


Maybe this is how icarus felt when he was mid fall, wax melting, feathers coming undone and floating into the air as he tumbled helplessly toward the water, knowing the end was coming but not knowing when.


constantly hurtling toward a turbulent proverbial ocean, slamming into one mental wall after another, trying to force himself to keep his eyes open because somehow sleeping is worse than this. 


His eyes ache.


the growl of the trans am’s engine rips to life on the tv and he jolts, heartbeat suddenly in his ears as he fumbles for the remote, and with a click, Burt Reynolds’ smiling face disappears into black silence.


Okay. maybe no more car movies.


He finds himself on the rickety fire escape, staring up at the moon and absently searching for more than two stars.


Welcome to Hollywoodland, California, where all the stars are on earth, who needs stars in the sky! 


Sometimes when he sits up there, perched on the creaking metal grate, there’s an urge to push off--let go. For a moment he entertains the idea, lets his sleep deprived brain believe that he could soar instead of immediately crashing into the cracked street below him.


His eyes try to pull themselves down, down, down, heavy lids ache to become reacquainted with the bruised circles that have taken residence below bloodshot eyes, sunken in the three days since he’s let them truly close, allowed himself to lie his head against a pillow that’s too soft that he worries it will dissolve between his fingers.


He sways slightly, and the view of the ground below him jolts him back to attention. Stands to climb back into his grimy window, flip the TV back on and this time just watch the purple city screensaver of the TV float by.


He wonders what rent is like in Roku city.


Pushes the thoughts of melting wax and floating feathers to the back of his head, shoves them into that drawer with Libra moons and dusty rosaries.


Maybe it would go away if he would just sleep, but in all his dreams he falls.


The weightless feeling before his body jolts him back awake and it’s 4am, sits in his bed until the birds wake up and light streams through naked windows.

Longing

The pitter patter of rain against cobblestones is oddly comforting. Normally, he’d spend days like this curled up like a cat at a window, trying for the fourth time to finish reading The Divine Comedy.


His sisters had always hated the way he treated the books he read--cracking the spine and dog-earing the pages.


He’d always said that the wear on a book showed how loved it had been--the best books have the covers falling off from years and years of rereading.


The spine of this one is intact, only one page dog-eared. 


His eyes lazily drag across the page he’s opened it to.


Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving,

Seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly,

That, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me;


Love has conducted us unto one death;

Caina waiteth him who quenched our life”

These words were borne along from them to us.


He has no energy for the damned today. 

Icarian Blues

There's something to be said for the warm silence of a moment alone between someone and a hot mug of black coffee.


instead of “coffee and contemplation” or whatever that Netflix cop says, it’s more like “coffee and pick through your own brain desperately trying to remember any and everything until you reach too far ahead and tumble spectacularly to earth like a bastardized Icarus.” 


He can’t remember his little sister’s name but could recite every greek myth his mother ever told him. Blessed be the modern miracles of science. 


The smell of oranges and cigarettes remind him of home, his mother’s perfume and the smell of his father’s cigars that clung to the old wallpaper years after he was gone.


Two little sisters with gaps in their smiles and blonde pigtails, his family huddled around one old table in their cramped kitchen, all five of them laughing and eating cabbage rolls as the snow swirls out in the alley. 


Those are always the best dreams, when he wakes up with the taste of polenta still in his mouth before it turns to dust as he takes in the empty apartment. 


It’s too cold, too bare, too quiet. 


Cold days are the worst. The heating in his unit has been long shot, and the landlord dodges his calls so often he wonders if the man has made a game of it. 


Sometimes there are phantom pains, ones that creep into the bones and sinew of his arms, make him want to claw away and rid himself of the frigid feeling, set his very skeleton on fire. 


In lieu of lighting himself on fire, he bought a space heater, though the pitiful thing is barely enough to fill his small bedroom, drafty windows and poor insulation fighting battles too big for the little robot.


So he settles for coffee. It’s shit but it’s hot and amnesiacs can’t be choosers, nor can people in therapy be pyromaniacs. (this is a theory he hasn’t tested yet) 


On the really cold days, he haunts the streets, a ghost in a black leather jacket, but nothing really looks the way he remembers.


He imagines thick stone walls guarding the lost part of his brain, and a tiny version of himself  chipping away at the stone with a tiny pickaxe but it won’t budge.


He's felt brighter lately. If he closes his eyes, he can see the green ivy snaking through the cracks in his stone walls, creeping up and up as if reaching its tendrils like fingers toward the sun. 


If I am to be icarus, I want to feel the embrace of sunlight before my fall.

bite the hand

i will bite the hand that feeds

and feel red between my teeth

down to the bone

maybe then i’ll drown the poppies in my chest

that reach out to you 

like you are their sunshine

warm and familiar

with your fingertips like matchsticks that ignite me

as if i am doused in gasoline

and when i am charred to the bone

licking wounds that never seem to heal

i seem to remember too late

a black cat that cuts across my path

tooth and claw 

i’d gnaw off my hand before reaching out for yours again